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Sunday, December 29, 2013

The Boxcar Children, Graphic Novel by Shannon Eric Denton

I’m a huge fan of graphic novels! I loved all the comic books that I used to
read as a kid, but over the years I’ve gotten away from the worlds of Batman and
Superman. Graphic novels are kind of
like comic books, but each book usually tells a self-contained story instead of
being one part in an ongoing series.
Also, unlike comic books, it’s socially acceptable for a grown man to
read a graphic novel in public!

I had never actually read any of the “Boxcar Children”
mysteries by Gertrude Chandler Warner, so I was really excited to find this
graphic novel at my library. The Boxcar
Children are two boys and two girls who become orphans after their parents
die. Afraid that they might get split up
by their foster parents, the children decide to run off together. They end up building a camp in the woods, and
taking shelter inside of an abandoned railroad boxcar. The Boxcar Children impressed me with their
resourcefulness, and they did a pretty good job of running a house by
themselves.

One thing I noticed about this book was that there was much
more of an emphasis on pictures rather than words. Some pages only had one or two
sentences. The illustrations did a great
job of telling the story so I don’t feel like I missed out on anything, but
I’ll definitely have to go back and get the original book for comparison! Most of the sequels that follow in this
series are mystery chapter books, and that’s definitely something that I’d be
interested in reading.

From time to time, most kids come to wonder what would
happen if they were suddenly alone in the world. I think that the Boxcar Children were lucky
to have had each other to rely on when their parents died, and that was a big
reason why they were so successful in the woods. Have you ever thought about what it would be
like to live on your own? Would you feel
lonely, or scared? Or maybe you might enjoy
the time to yourself?